Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Will VAs Rule the World?

Does a human or robot virtual assistant (VA) make knowledge work easier?

Human virtual assistance has been a booming business for almost a decade, and now, with the wide launch of Amazon Echo, you can have a robot as well. However, just because technology grows ever more sophisticated doesn’t mean our lives as knowledge workers are getting any easier. We will have a variety of needs that aren’t being met with existing process and tools. In this piece, we’ll examine the productivity pros and cons associated with all kinds of virtual assistants, answering the question: are they worth it?

Dan Ackerman at CNET thinks the Amazon Echo was the breakthrough product of 2015. For those who don’t know, Echo is an internet-connected wireless speaker wrapped around a digital personal assistant named Alexa.

Why does Ackerman love the Echo so much? He claims that, unlike any other voice-recognition technology he has tried, Alexa understood what he was saying at least 80 percent of the time, and very often offered logical, informative replies. He was also able to speak to Alexa in an everyday, casual voice that puts Siri’s required mega-enunciation to shame.

Echo makes sure you’re dressed appropriately for the weather. It can access audio streams from Pandora, TuneIn and other providers; answer general interest questions, often by quoting Wikipedia; access your Google Calendar information; and even control some of the most popular smart home devices including Philips Hue and Belkin’s WeMo products.

Just this week, Amazon announced some new features for the Echo. One is a fitness option. You can now ask Alexa to start a seven-minute workout, for instance, and she will provide “a set of exercises designed to increase metabolism, improve energy, lower stress, and remove fat.” Another is “Ask Fidelity,” which will pull up stock quotes by name or ticker symbol, and you can also ask for information about the latest political debates.

VAs: When robots catch up to humans

It’s only a matter of time before the Echo and Alexa can do nearly all administrative tasks associated with knowledge work – including setting up and transcribing meetings, organizing your online files, managing projects, creating reports, building databases, summarizing articles and books, publishing your writing, managing your social media accounts, processing invoices and expenses, and booking business travel.

Many start-ups and small businesses have been using human virtual assistants (VAs) for years. But during the recession, when full-time, onsite administrative help became scarcer, remote human VAs made their debut in larger and more established organizations. Increasingly, virtual assistants are being hired by companies on a work-from-home basis to help out executives and teams with admin, creative, and/or technical tasks.

Like other independent contractors, remote VAs provide services using their own space and equipment, and typically do not enjoy company benefits like insurance. Terms and contracts are fluid, and many VAs never meet their clients in person – communicating instead via a bevy of videoconferencing and project collaboration tools.

For the rest of the post, head on over to QuickBase's Fast Track blog.

How to Be a Standout in Your Field

Brand strategist Scott James of publishing firm Greenleaf Book Group knows something about making a name for yourself in a field where everyone is smart and at the top of their game. He’s come up with the four questions that separate experts from pretenders.

Scott James believes there’s a clear line between experts who have built a platform and brand around their expertise and experts who are great at their work but haven’t figured out how to do this. What does this line look like? James says it’s the ability to answer the following four questions off the cuff. It shows that experts with big ideas think about specific, high level gauges of success, progress and growth all the time and guide their actions and initiative accordingly.

What’s Working? 

Experts know the answer to this because they measure everything. Those who build a business around their expertise know which email approach adds the most to their bottom line and they know if flying to a certain city for a meeting is the right move. They have a system in place to keep track of such things, and they take the time to assess and understand their data. Every successful expert can rattle off the two or three things they do that drives their business and expands their audience—and they can do so without thinking about it too hard.

What is Making You Stand Out?

Experts with strong personal brands know that they are swimming in a crowded ocean, and they can pinpoint what it is about what they do that other people get excited about, and they know how to talk about what they do in a way that honors their uniqueness and targets the specific needs of the people they want to influence.

What’s Next?

Experts think several steps ahead. The ability to be deeply in the project that is happening now and already be thinking at 50,000 feet (and how today is laying a foundation for three years from now) is a difficult mental tightrope to walk. But whereas some people get buried in the details of their current project and let everything else go, experts can walk that tightrope because they know it’s critical. Experts can’t afford to wait until after their current project is finished to think about what’s next.

For the rest of my tips, have a look at the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Collaboration Has Infiltrated the IT World

At the recent Gartner Catalyst Conference in San Diego, PGi’s John Perkins talked about strength of the collaboration movement in the IT industry. As CIO reported, collaboration trends are breaking down IT silos and promoting responsive communication and agile development. Thanks to its newfound flexibility, IT is executing faster than ever. The following are positive collaboration trends Perkins shared.

Organization-Wide Teamwork

A collaborative approach to development involves strengthening partnerships across departments. Every cross-functional project facilitates greater engagement for IT across the organization.

Shared Workspaces

As more employees take advantage of flexible work arrangements, permanent workspaces that are empty much of the time will no longer make sense. Teams are more likely to inhabit collective workspaces while working on a particular project, with the temporary physical proximity promoting teamwork.

Virtual Teams

There is still a shortage of IT talent in many regions of the United States. IT organizations get the job done by employing qualified individuals regardless of physical locale. Collaboration software allows remote teams to operate as seamlessly as in-person ones.

Custom Solutions

Collaboration platforms allow IT and citizen developers to quickly build out custom applications for every function of the business. More than ever, IT professionals need to understand the requirements of various business units so that they can arrive at the right solutions.

Instant Communication

In the past, collaboration across time zones was challenging. However, new collaboration tools are always on, allowing synchronous and asynchronous communication regardless of where and when team members are working.

For more where this came from, visit QuickBase's Fast Track blog.

The State of IT in 2016

The latest report from Spiceworks outlines what's happening in IT this year. The study of 800+ worldwide IT pros, which we started covering last year, explores budgetary concerns, technology trends, and the general state of the IT industry.

First and most importantly, IT budgets are barely budging. CIOs’ global planned spending is expected to increase by only about $2,000 year over year, and North American IT departments will get more money than their EMEA counterparts. Along those same lines, 60 percent of IT professionals are not planning to hire additional staff in 2016.

According to the research, more than half of respondents expect company revenue to continue increasing in 2016. Nevertheless,IT is not considered a strategic imperative, and senior leaders are determined to keep costs low until something major breaks.

Where the Money Goes

IT leaders’ top priorities are hardware and software, though spending for hosted/cloud-based and managed service projects is slated to increase slightly over 2015. Also, despite the fact that Windows 10 is a free upgrade for most, IT pros still plan to spend some money on hardware as part of their OS rollout.

Some speculate about a world without desktops, but they aren’t going away anytime soon. IT pros may predict that desktops will eventually be replaced by mobile devices, but nearly a quarter of all hardware spending is still allocated to them.

IT is driven to purchase new technology mostly by EOL and company growth requirements. New features are the least compelling, with only a quarter of IT pros citing these as drivers for new tech purchases. If a system is working well, IT will usually not move to replace it.

What Keeps Them Awake?

Security and OSes top the list of troublesome issues. Only half of surveyed IT pros believe their organization’s data is adequately protected and consider IT security a top priority for 2016.

About three-quarters of respondents consider their organizations at risk for technology, IT security, and manmade disasters or incidents. Yet IT spend on security hardware, software, and services will remain flat year over year with IT professionals planning to allocate only 6 percent of their total budget to security.

Per the survey, many organizations aren’t conducting regular security audits or updating security practices to help protect against worldwide increase in security breaches, so there’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to securing IT environments.

Spiceworks’ respondents report that Microsoft Windows 7 is still the most adopted OS, followed by Windows XP, which does not have a great reputation when it comes to security. Of the most popular OSes, Windows 8 has the lowest penetration rate. Even Microsoft Windows Server 2003, which had its end-of-service in April 2015, is still present in 60 percent of companies.

IT pros say their top OS initiatives for 2016 are upgrading to Windows 10 and migrating from Windows Server 2003. In addition, surveyed IT pros who’ve allocated budget to OS upgrades expect to upgrade older hardware during these OS projects.

More than three-quarters of survey respondents currently use server virtualization—significantly more than those supporting mobility and BYOD. But only a third is using advanced solutions despite increased security attacks.

For more insights, check out the full post on Quickbase's Fast Track blog.

Project Managers: Will Your Job Be Outsourced?

In a recent CIO Magazine article, Moira Alexander of Conture Business Advisors points out that an in-house PMO isn’t a foregone conclusion. Depending on your industry, type or size of business, and the specifics of your organization, your CIO might consider outsourcing the project management function to be a sensible move. What are some of the signs that your company might go in this direction, and what can you do to save your role?

Low Staffing Levels

Alexander says that many businesses do not have adequate staffing levels for one or more employees to solely focus on managing projects. You, your team, and other existing resources may already be overextended and only able to focus efforts on the daily operational duties that keep the business afloat. If you’ve been running around like crazy doing the work of three peoplefor as long as you can remember, this scenario might apply.

Shortage of Experienced Staff

We all know that project management is not an easy skill set to hire. You might have it, but do others in your company? Alexander comments that outsourcing may make sense if internal team members do not have the PM experience and/or training to effectively take a project from inception to closeout. Lack of specialized expertise in a particular area may be a factor as well.

Cash Flow Issues

In all industries and types of organizations, budgets are shrinking. It may be more costly to find, hire, and train project management staff than to find a vendor who can offer similar services on a per-project basis.

Business Model Decisions

Today’s business world is constantly in flux, and if your company experiences a re-organization or a shift in its business model, senior leadership may not be sure where an internal PMO will fit. Alexander says, for instance, that if the majority of your projects are of the one-off or ad-hoc variety, it may be more cost-effective and less of an administrative burden to outsource.

For my case against outsourcing, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Brian Solis on the Customer Experience

To business futurist Brian Solis, capturing an audience’s heart, mind, and spirit is mandatory.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter, a Prophet company, who has written a book that’s not really a book. X: Where Business Meets Design looks more like a sexy app than a business how-do, but it still does a great job explaining why customer experience, more than any other business priority, defines a company’s brand and determines its outlook for the future. Here’s what Brian had to say during our recent phone conversation:

Your definition of customer experience is a little different, and how does X provide a new experience from what business book readers may be used to?

Brian: Depending on who you talk to, you’ll get a different interpretation of what customer experience means. It is sometimes thought of transactionally, and related to CRM, support, or journey mapping. In general, customer experience is misunderstood and underappreciated. My feeling is that customer experience is the sum of all engagements. It’s not about customer experience, but all experience. In this business world, we need to think more holistically because everything is connected.

Of course, it would be ironic to tell people this in a traditional book format, and I think that authors who write about disruption should disrupt themselves. For X, I considered what a high school student would take delight in learning from. I wrote tweetable sentences with lots of visuals and white space, and the result was a cross between an app and a beautiful coffee table book.

You say that having a great product is no longer enough. What happens to great products (and their companies) that don’t have creative marketing and stellar customer service behind them?

It seems obvious to make a great product backed by great marketing and service, but without a conducive culture, it doesn’t always happen. Many incumbent businesses are built on 60-year-old models and are slow to change and in danger of being left behind. Startups are taking over because they get to reimagine everything. When culture, product, and service are aligned, the result is immersive and empowering. You’ll create a living community around your brand that becomes bigger than any one product.

For the rest of Brian's interview, visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.

5 Essentials for the “Office” of the Future

Yesterday I traveled to the Gil Hatch Center for Customer Innovation in Rochester, NY to talk with my partner Xerox and visiting press and analysts about the future of work and office technology. Given that the office isn’t a necessary a physical location anymore, both software and hardware must be configured to be used effectively and efficiently by a growing virtual, mobile and contract workforce. Whether you are an enterprise or an SMB, here are the must-haves for your technology.

IoT and mobile operations

Technology must be accessible anytime, anywhere, by both full-time and contract workers. Mobile phones must be able to seamlessly communicate with other devices via the Internet of Things as well as any onsite infrastructures and systems, and users want to automate complex processes with a single touch or action. And, all of this must be done with minimal intervention from IT as these professionals can only assist so many people at once.

Remote collaboration

In 2016, flexwork is king, meaning that the days of the majority of your employees working together in the same location are likely numbered. But technology must facilitate virtual work in which it’s just as easy and productive to engage with your colleague in Japan as it is with the one in the cubicle next door. Technology must be agile, with the ability to support new collaboration apps being developed on the consumer side or via in-house citizen development.

Secure workflow to and from the cloud

When it comes to intellectual property residing in the cloud, security remains the biggest concern. Organizations want their data stored in a central location and accessible by everyone who needs it, but documents must be managed in a way that is controllable and protects them from internal and external threats and breeches.

Customized to the individual

Employees have variable needs and every individual has his or her own way of doing things, so mandating a certain process for using technology is a surefire way to hinder adoption. Tomorrow’s office systems must be personalized so that whether you prefer to print via mobile or manual methods or scan via email or QR codes, you’re covered.

Despite the obviously increasing sophistication of office technology demands, according to IDC, 40 percent of smartphone users and 35 percent of tablet users don’t even know how to print from their device. So, as an example of new office technologies that address these demands while also simplifying solutions for the individual, Xerox has just released the 14 Xerox ConnectKey enabled i-Series multi-function printers (MFPs). In order to accommodate a diverse mobile workforce, the MFPs are designed with an intuitive user display with ready-to-use MFP applications right on the interface.

In particular, the Mobile Link app lets users create one-touch, automated workflows on their mobile devices to remotely control a Xerox MFP and transmit documents to fax, email and cloud-hosted services like Box, Dropbox and Google Drive. And, perhaps most importantly, the new MFPs have secure print and scan encryption so companies can ensure that documents remain confidential.

What new technologies are helping you be more productive at work?

The World of Compensation is Changing – with Far Reaching Consequences

Two big pieces of salary-related news hit the Internet recently. Credit card processing company Gravity Payments’ CEO was forced to defend his decision to standardize all employee pay to $70K, and the SEC finalized a long-delayed rule forcing businesses to share their “pay ratio,” or how CEO pay compares with that of the average company worker. How might these developments affect business productivity?

$70K Salary Policy Does More Harm Than Good

First up, Dan Price. Thirty year-old Price is the founding CEO of Gravity. He made headlines when he decided to fight income inequality by raising the minimum salary of his 120 employees to $70K. About 70 people got raises and another 30 had their pay doubled instantly. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time.

But, problems were apparent immediately. For one thing, a lot of talented mid-level and senior-level hires quit right away. Entrepreneur’s Steve Tobak can see why: “An entry-level new hire who just clocks in and out is suddenly making almost as much as a veteran supervisor who busted her hump for years.”

“Leveling the playing field all at once as he did breeds resentment and virtually eliminates the merits of meritocracy. You simply can’t raise the minimum salary that high without it having a negative ripple effect throughout the organization.”

From a productivity standpoint, I don’t know that raising people’s salaries when the act has nothing to do with achievement will have the hoped-for effect. Some employees may be motivated to work harder for a CEO who has proved himself to be a nice guy, but those who got jacked up salaries likely have no incentive to push themselves or do more on any given day.

Junior-level employees want to be rewarded, but the purpose of the reward is important. I believe that most people are more satisfied and engaged at work when they are recognized for actual accomplishments. And when they are satisfied and engaged, they are more productive.

If I were a mid-level manager, on the other hand, I think that unconscious negative feelings associated with income fascism would either directly or indirectly decrease my productivity. After all, why should I go out of my way to share my expertise and acquire new expertise on behalf of a company that doesn’t really value it? Someone should do an experiment on this, ideally before any other companies pull the trigger on standardizing pay.

For the other controversy impacting the world of pay, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Micromanagement is Bad for the Brain

Historically, leaders have controlled employees rather than connecting with them. According to neuroscientist and educator Dalton Kehoe, author of Mindful Management, this approach has had a negative impact on the conscious, neural needs that motivate people to work productively. Here’s why.

Inside the human brain, things get complicated when someone has the legitimate right to tell us what to do. One part of the brain knows that the situation requires attention, but the mirror neuron system suggests that another’s dominance is actually a low-level threat. We are fearful and we want get away from the person.

Dominant Doctors Are Perceived Negatively

The subtlety and power of this situation is reflected in the work of psychologist Nalini Ambady. She asked research study participants to listen to short recordings of surgeons talking to patients. The exchanges were filtered to preserve the intonation, rhythm and pitch of the surgeons’ voices, but they eliminated content.

Ambady then asked participants whether the doctor had ever been sued for malpractice. If the surgeon’s voice was judged to sound dominant, participants guessed that he or she had been sued. If the voice sounded less dominant and more concerned, the surgeon was put into the non-sued group.

Follow-up studies have shown that people don’t trust doctors who show dominance without concern. Patients who can’t emotionally connect to a doctor don’t do as they are told, but when they get sick again, they blame the physician.

Dominant Managers Breed Willful Employees

Similarly, if a manager speaks in a dismissive and controlling way, employees automatically resist what they’re saying. As John Zenger and Amy Cuddy have shown in their research, most managers unthinkingly emphasize their strength, competence, and credentials at work, which doesn’t emotionally engage their staff.

To feel engaged, our mirror neurons must mimic the emotions of connection and positive anticipation (optimism) while our manager is talking to us, rather than feelings of distance, aggressiveness or contempt. Dominance triggers low-level threat and our emotional energy turns inward for protection.

For the rest of the article, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.